It has been a bit of a tornado start to the year for me so, with the first sunshine of the year signaling Spring (fingers crossed), I'm extending my Spring cleaning to my sites and blogs.

This is mainly for the handful of you that have actually subscribed to my blogs.  I'm transitioning so that the content will be separated out across various blogs as follows:

Rochelle Dancel

In a couple of weeks, this blog will be moving to blog.rochelledancel.com.  The reason for the URL change is because it is currently published by FTP to Blogger and, as Blogger has removed support for FTP uploads, it has to be migrated to a new URL via their migration tool to facilitate canonical indexing.  My RSS feed is now available via Feedburner, so please update your RSS readers so you'll be up to date when the change happens.

This will remain my principle blog covering all things work-related, as well as commentary and tips on work-related issues.  If you follow my blog for posts relating to branding, communications, non-profit and design, this is where it will continue to be published.

Philosophy Times Studio

For the most part, Philosophy Times Studio will be handling my collaborative projects, most immediately production for the new webseries, 2 Girls Kissing.  Posts on that blog will cover production updates, as well as updates on forthcoming projects.  This site will be available around the end of April.

Rochelle Dancel on Posterous

If you want to know what my favourite meal of the day is, why I think everyone should nap, or a great band that I went to see rock it out, my Posterous blog is where you'll find all the weird and sometimes wonderful life sprinkles in my work/life ice cream cone.

So that's it.  The new feed will be available on Feedburner in the next couple of weeks, so follow me on Twitter to catch the announcement and in the meantime update your RSS readers accordingly.

I have finally gotten around to scheduling in some time to develop my own site, so that's in the works, as well as a number of other web properties, so it's going to be a very exciting year.  Cheers for your support :)

Every new beginning is marked with a new name.  But I'm having issues selecting one and, as result, it's holding me up somewhat.

I freelance under my own name and will continue to do so in future.  However, because of the projects I’m launching this year and the increasing number of collaborations I’m doing I need to form a limited company with a new business name.

I’m not hiring anyone, I’m not looking to turn into an agency at this stage or anything like that – it’s still going to be projects either delivered exclusively by me or led by me.  Apart from design and web strategy projects, this new entity will look after all of my web series production, any online properties (including blogs) and a new merchandise line.

My work is ever-changing - it ranges from creative to consultancy to management, whilst my clients range from non-profits to businesses and media publishers - so the name needs to be malleable/vague enough to encompass all of these things.  Consequently, I’d like to eschew words like ‘media’, ‘creative’ or ‘productions’.

I’ve narrowed it down to three choices:

• Philosophy Studio – ordinarily, I would have passed on this one because it contains ‘studio’; however, it’s currently the name of my work-related blog and most people that follow me know it.

• Hey, Squish! – I just like this; I came up with this when brainstorming names for my t-shirt line, but ‘Produced by Hey, Squish!’ sounds pretty good too.

• Oli&Chris – Named after the personalities of both of my brothers: fun, witty, courageous, thoughtful, serious, spontaneous, pragmatic, dynamic, juxtaposed…

So, please vote!  And leave your comments in the comments… Thanks!

This year, I surrendered to peer / work pressure and joined the ranks of the Crackberry users. One of the nice things about this was that I always had a camera to hand and, as you will see, I got well into recording even the most random of events.

So here are some choice moments from my year as seen from my Blackberry.

January

Saw the New Year in at a house party in Toronto.



We saw snow in London for the first time in years - this is an excited me in front of my house.

March

The opening night party of Priscilla Queen of the Desert - The Musical in London with tiny cupcakes.



Dim sum in Chinatown on Mother's Day.

May

First trip to Prague.



Me and my brother, Oliver, impersonating Japanese tourists in the courtyard of the castle on top of the hill in Prague.

June

Because of the Tube strike, river boats were running free of charge so I enjoyed gorgeous views on my way to work in Tower Hill from Westminster.

July

Summer in the city - people hanging out in St James' Park.



View from the bridge at St James' Park.



One of the many floats preparing to join the parade at London Pride 2009.



The 2009 London Pride March reaches Oxford Circus.

August

Dessert with visiting family members in Paul's near Covent Garden.



Me and my mohawk at the fancy dress 30th birthday party of my friend, Caroline (left), with our friend, Siobhan (right) - although from this picture you would've thought it was my birthday!




Hanging out with designer and photographer, Gerry Alexis, in Soho Square followed by our routine trip to Ed's for gravy fries.

September

Hanging out with Shirin Papillon (founder of One More Lesbian) at Eurout's first birthday in Hamburg; needless to say, much alcohol and jetlag played a part in our dishevelled state. The next day I made friends with a statue in the courtyard of St Nikolai's church.



The old PayPoint.net office in Tower Hill shortly before the move.

November

A rainbow graces the view from our new office in Finsbury Square.



Inspecting the new business cards that I designed for Regan Latimer at Bee Charmer Productions.



Me in Budapest for my Mum's birthday weekend.

December

Celebrating my brother's 27th birthday near Covent Garden.



My neighbourhood sprinkled with the sudden snowfall.



Anticipating Secret Santa in the office.



Anticipating Christmas at home.

Who knows what my Blackberry will see in 2010...?

Christmas is a great time of the year to volunteer for your favourite cause, charity or community group.  I used to volunteer several hours a week but, like a lot of people, my work schedule has overtaken me somewhat and I have not been able to offer pro bono hours for the last three months.

So, in January, I am giving away chunks of half days of my time to charities, social enterprises or community groups based in London.

Projects I have previously worked on in this time include

• designing flyers for training
• facilitating project planning for new websites
• putting together a marketing plan for a web series
• performing user scenario testing on existing websites to increase positive user experience
• brainstorming online marketing strategy for new blogs
• building a three page microsite for an event
• designing skins for Blogger, Twitter and other online platforms in keeping with existing brand colours and style (like I did with WRC's blog).

I'm open to most projects that can test and utilise my background in design, web strategy and marketing, so feel free to contact me with your idea.

Compliments of the season to you all and a very happy 2010!

**Update - 18 January 2010
I have had an amazing response to this, so much so that I'm scheduled deep into February.  Needless to say, all of my pro bono hours have been pledged for this window of my year.  Schedule permitting, I plan on opening up the calendar again in the Spring, so watch this space!

A few weeks ago, the Women’s Resource Centre announced they were looking for a new Head of Communications as their current post holder, the incredible Leah Williams, is moving on to pastures new. I have to confess that I looked at it with great anticipation, because back in the day, when I was the information co-ordinator at a small domestic violence charity, if I could have had any job in the voluntary sector then Leah’s job would have been it.  WRC was – and still is – a dynamic organisation staffed by superwomen and that team does amazing things.

In the two years since, I have often said that I would never go back to working for a charity.  Don’t get me wrong: the last charity I worked for was far from being a bad place.  They were at the forefront of creating policies for addressing domestic violence in London and worked with a large number of organisations at all levels to get these policies embedded.  But, like most charities, they were small and underfunded.  There was a lack of development opportunities and my very limited knowledge on all things techie was still the most advanced within the organisation with no one to mentor me.  And as our workload was always immense, projects that I wanted to develop always took a back seat.  

Most frustratingly, looking at all the organisations we worked with back then, many of them had to be dragged kicking and screaming to try out new tools, always too busy, too underfunded, or – the worst thing of all – too closed minded to see their potential.  

To everyone’s benefit, in the last couple of years the development and availability of free and fabulous tools, especially in social media, have made information sharing easier than ever to seamlessly integrate into your daily workflow and engage with a new audience in networking and campaigning activities.

The one thing that I realise now that I have always carried since leaving the sector is the perception of charities in the dark ages who perceive email as being the most advanced method of communication, of having to battle with organisations to simply try a new idea.  Consequently, in retrospect, I’ve realised why I have always been surprised when the charities for which I now consult have welcomed some new ideas on getting their messages across.

I had the privilege of attending my first NFPtweetup a couple of weeks back.  NFPtweetup is a meeting of Twitter users who work with or in non-profit organisations and are interested in harnessing the potential of social media for campaigning, fundraising and supporting activities that do good things in the world.  I met consultants, social enterprises, CSR professionals, agencies and people who have responsibility for communications, information, digital, fundraising and campaigning at their charities.  And they weren’t in the least bit stuffy, skeptical or ignorant of new tools.  They all worked for organisations that were excited about the potential of social media and were embracing it to great benefit for their organisations.  A shining example was I CAN’s Adopt A Word initiative that exploded when Stephen Fry tweeted about it.

I left feeling incredibly inspired by all the organisations present.  I learnt so much about how they had gotten their organisations to buy in to the benefits of social media and what they do to keep their activities current and relevant.  Most staggeringly though, it really made me want to work with non-profits full time again.

One of the interesting people I met was Jack Wilson from Leap Anywhere, an organisation that I can best describe as 'Time Out for good'.  Leap promotes and creates video content of events for good causes all over the country.  This week, I did a brainstorm with Jack and Tom Robbins, Leap’s Head of Content, at their office on some forthcoming activities they have planned.  Their Soho office had a great vibe; their team was huddled around the main table with their laptops, bantering and editing, whilst we were bouncing around ideas on their sofa.  We really had a great meeting.

Much of the advice I was able to give them was gleaned from experience working in the private sector.  I’ve been able to take advantage of training budgets, work with people that have more knowledge and experience of all things online, learn efficient business processes and how to run effective marketing campaigns, and develop and launch projects with all the resources that most charities don’t have.

And that’s exactly why I won’t be applying for the Head of Communications job at WRC.  I realised that I have more fun and I’m much better at working with organisations that do good things, as opposed to in them.  This way, I get the best of both worlds; I’m constantly learning and developing through the work I do with private companies and advising non-profits on how to use what I’ve learnt to move their projects forward.

I hope WRC gets someone good.  If you know anyone, you have the weekend to get your application in!

It has been a pretty busy, very fruitful summer, leading in to what’s shaping up to be an exciting autumn for me. Here’s what I’ve been up to and what’s coming up next!

Web Series

B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye

Last July, Regan Latimer, the genius behind creating and making B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye, signed a development deal with Toronto based production company, Matter Of Fact Media. The announcement was covered by Tubefilter.tv and you can read the announcement on our blog.

Regan is currently working on the pilot script to be included in a package that will be shopped to broadcasters. Whilst we’re keeping our fingers crossed that it will be picked up, we’re continuing to produce content for the website and engaging in other promotional activities. Recently, Regan and the cast did a series of interviews for SistersTalk Radio and I giggled my way through them.

So far, I’ve loved working on Fletcher and, wherever the show goes during this exciting period, I’m looking forward to continuing to contribute to its success.

People often ask how I can manage to work on Fletcher when I live in London and the show is made in Toronto. This shot of a typical meeting was taken whilst we were drafting the media release announcing the development deal.

Such concentration...

2 Girls Kissing – The Web Series

You didn’t think one web series was enough, did you!?

We’re still in early days with 2GK. Like many good things, it was conceived in some moments of silliness during an ichat with (who else?) Regan Latimer. We knew we were on to a good thing when, the next morning, we were talking online whilst at our respective day jobs and we both confessed that we’d had a number of ideas for the show.

We’re still working on the concept and operationally how we’re going to produce it and make it, but I’m really looking forward to sinking my teeth into something creatively again. So watch this space…

Confessions of Indie Web Series Creators

My first article for Tubefilter News was posted last August. It’s an article that I really enjoyed putting together because it gave me the chance to connect with other web series producers that I had previously ‘met’ on Twitter. The resulting article is called Confessions of Indie Web Series Creators: Things They Wish They Knew (I’m sure you’ve already read the complete contributions to the article on my blog!).

Events

London Pride 2009

This one is a little hard to believe, but until this year the closest I’d gotten to a Pride event was shopping on Oxford Street last year and trying to find a way to cross the road whilst the parade went by.

This year, I volunteered with Amnesty International and spent the afternoon walking alongside the float, putting stickers on anyone that moved (and some who didn’t) and passing out flyers. It was pretty hot and we were exhausted by the end of it, but it was a not-too-shabby way to properly enjoy my first Pride.

With fellow Amnesty volunteer, Maite Morren

Eurout’s 1st Birthday

eurOut offers its readers the latest news about European lesbian and bisexual women in entertainment and politics in the English language. Now the biggest blog of its kind in Europe, eurOut celebrated its first birthday last weekend with its supporters and fans, and I was privileged to be able to join them in their birthday celebrations in the beautiful city of Hamburg.

Having tweeted with them pretty much on a daily basis this year, it was great (and slightly weird) to finally meet online their founder and Editor in Chief, Sandra, Entertainment Editor, Natazzz (right, leading our walking tour of Hamburg), Political Editor, Maxime68, eurGeek herself, Tedoe, and new eurOut vlogger, Zasquia.

Much chocolate was exchanged, much steak was eaten, much drinking was done responsibly (!) and many new friends were made. More pictures can be found on eurOut's website.

One of the highlights of the weekend was a concert by the amazing chicks of Greymatter, a British five-piece flown over especially to play for us.  They were absolutely incredible and I'm looking forward to catching them live in the UK.

Enjoying post-concert drinks with some of the chicks from Greymatter

I admire the talent behind eurOut immensely. It is yet another example of what can be achieved with no budget and no resources but a talented group of motivated, exciting individuals. I’m looking forward to next year!

Back to school!

Every good media professional endeavours to keep their skillset current and sharp, so, aware of the start of the upcoming school year, I started to look at training courses that I wanted to do based on requests that I get in my various projects. Completely unplanned (and definitely unintended), my schedule this autumn returns to that of my university days as I take on two modules at City University, where I first learnt HTML back in the day (image credit - City University).

I will be taking a module in Flash & ActionScript as part of the training and development that goes with my role as Online Marketing Specialist at PayPoint.net. Whilst I have a working knowledge of Flash, it’s always a blessing to be able to learn something old school, so look out on the website after Christmas for the fruits of my labour!

The second module is in PHP. I have to admit that, as my strength and passion lies more in design, I never thought that this is something I’d ever take. However, Six Revisions put out an article earlier this year arguing that designers should learn to code and, whilst I didn’t agree with all of it, I think knowing more about how your designs will be interpreted and coded can only make you a better designer.

Back in the day, I worked in the voluntary sector and, to this day, I still get a lot of requests asking for advice on ‘techie things’ from voluntary sector organisations with which I’m still in touch, or that got my email address from someone… Anyhow, I’ve recently been involved in much discussion and projects recently in the way that open source tools can help non-profit organisations. Add all that to my burgeoning interest in Wordpress and the fact that I aim to do a day of pro bono work every month, and it makes sense that I learn the nuts and bolts of how to properly set up dynamic, database driven websites using open source content management systems.

I was going to leave this module until January, but I’d like to get started on developing the 2GK website as soon as possible, and I’d like a clean schedule in January – who knows what the New Year will bring! I’m actually looking forward to being back in the classroom again. And come the New Year, my CV and portfolio will be in such amazing shape.

So, busy summer - sooooo looking forward to the rest of the year.  Have a great autumn!

A few years ago, just after I was out of university the first time around and about to spend a year in Canada, a friend suggested that I keep a blog to keep everyone posted about what I was up to. Back then, I didn’t really have anything to blog about other than my travels, and really, no one needed to know about that.

When I got back from Canada I spent three years doing everything ‘techie related’ working for a charity that worked on policy and good practice standards for agencies addressing issues around domestic violence in London. I got my MA in Media & Communications, focussing on alternative politics and new media, and then I went freelance.

Now, because of the projects that I have been blessed to be a part of, I get a lot of emails from friends, colleagues – old and new - asking me how I put a certain website together, or how a particular film project came about, or what my thinking was behind a certain design. I also get emails from people I met in my non-profit days asking for advice on all things ‘techie related’.

In part, this blog is a place to put all those emails that I have forwarded several times over, like how to manage a tendering processing for a piece of artwork or how I deal with working across different time zones.

I am currently the Associate Producer on B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye, a lesbian comedy web series filmed in Toronto. I am developing a follow-up to Brent Talking Heads, a documentary that I wrote and directed for the London Borough of Brent around the specialist domestic violence court process. I continue to work on design and media projects in a freelance capacity and I am the Online Marketing Specialist at PayPoint.net, a role that has been, and continues to be, an incredible learning curve for me.

So whilst this blog has no one particular focus – design, media production, alternative politics, or just life as a creative freelancer – I hope that someone somewhere finds some part of it useful. Or amusing. Or supported in the knowledge that there is some other freelancer somewhere trying to make it all work!